Computing technology has transformed the way we work and play. Often, the data represented on a computing system is many times more valuable than the hardware of the computing system itself. Despite the utmost care, however, data can still be lost. In order to protect against data loss, data from a computing system may be backed up to a secondary storage device such as, for example, another network location, or perhaps even an external storage device connectable directly to the computing system. In one backup environment, for example, an image of an entire disk volume may be backed up.
When restoration of the data is needed, conventional restoration technology suspends access to the data, recovers the data, and then reallows access to the data. However, sometimes the recovery of data is time-consuming, requires reboots, overwhelms available network bandwidth, or suffers from other performance limitations. This is particularly true when the amount of data to replace is large as when, for example, recovering an entire volume image over a network. When a single backup location serves as backup for multiple systems, the performance constraints can be even more frustrating.
The suspending of access represents inconvenience to the user and often results in lost productivity.